A University of Virginia philologist gathers the strange lore of his own and earlier centuries into chapters on witchcraft, black and white magic, dreams, visions, ghosts, divination, possession, animal magnetism, miraculous cures and mysticism. Anecdote follows anecdote, from apparitions keeping promises made in life to seers and healers, and the author insists such phenomena deserve examination rather than ridicule.
A rich storehouse of nineteenth-century belief in the uncanny, best read as a record of what educated people of 1873 wondered about. Download the free EPUB.